Well, Mom, I did it. I ordered the false ricasso, the one complete with quillion and rings. And I picked up my martingale today. So the season's off to a good start. Too bad I'll be flying to DC on Friday and back on Monday -- I guess next Wednesday will have to do, unless that's when Pat comes back.

[["Mom decided she wants to make a gift for the Secret Santas this year. She hauled out some yarn and crochet hooks but so far all she has is a big tangle of yarn in her lap. Maybe we can wrap it up and offer it as a cat toy for the recipient?" SRS]]

And NOW, the day before yesterday's happenings in Pocatello (The Gate City and Smile Capital of the United States) fresh from the Associated Press:

POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) -- Anita Ovard moved to her small home in this town in the western foothills of the Rocky Mountains because she wanted to see more wildlife. But the view got a little too close when a moose decided to make itself at home in her front room.

Ovard spotted two baby moose in her yard when she pulled into the driveway Tuesday. She immediately started looking for the mother moose, spotting the massive animal just before it plowed through her storm door and front door.

"There's a big gouge, and you can see where the whole front of the (moose's) body went right through it. It broke the wood frame," Ovard told the Idaho State Journal. "Try telling that to an insurance company."

Hoping to stop the moose from doing more damage, Ovard opened the sliding glass door in the rear of the home to give the animal an easier exit and then ran away as fast as she could. The moose, also frightened, turned and ran back out the front door.

A Fish and Game officer told Ovard the moose likely spotted its own reflection in a window, and forced its way into the home because it thought there was another moose nearby posing a threat to its babies.

Ovard, who is accustomed to finding moose eating from the apple tree in her yard, is laughing about the incident.

"It's their environment," she said. "We're building houses on their environment. They have no place to go."

This lady live in Old Town, the same area where I work and which has been a thriving area of homes and commerce since 1887 (at least).

Which proves my point about things related to cottage cheese. See, it is one thing to be "close to Nachur" but if you yourself in doing aso are tempted away from honoring and being true to your OWN nature, as a human being, what then, that's unnatural, see? Even if your own nature is to do things not in harmony with nature. It's just the nature of the problem. One's own nature must be clear and act as the fundamental. It is not my nature, for example, to conserve.

I'm jest a little mommaless moose Hanging around and running loose Momma was a good gal, but she ran out of juice! Left me a mommaless moose.

There's just me and my sister moose, Life ain't easy, dat's da troof, Momma's just a conserve, stewed in her juice, And I'm just a mommaless moose!

Oooooh, ooooh, what's amoose to do? How would you feel if it happened to you? Now my family tree is Roadkill au jus, She gambled on aces but she drew a deuce, And I'm jest a mommaless moose. No momma! I'm jest a mommaless moose.

From my contacts in the food industry, Little Hawk, I understand it was the other way around, and that Cottage Cheese dumped you. She said you looked a bleached dachsund. She had to close her eyes a lot when she was out with you.

I've seen those cottage cheese ceilings. Horrible! It's very hard to just relax, close your eyes, and fall asleep when you lie down under a cottage cheese ceiling.

It is the prevalence of cottage cheese ceilings in cheap motels, in fact, that led my workmate Jim Townsley to remark on various occasions (in reference to some woman passing by...): "She's a curd counter." This was a variant on his usual "she's a spot counter" remarks.

Jim and I worked at the gas bar on Highway 11. He had a lot of provocative one-liners about women.

My really lousy day thus far started when I woke up an hour and a half late. Then I missed a meeting 40 miles away, but was able to attend by telephone. The Technical Services Supervisor left to take her husband back down to the VA Hospital in Salt Lake City because the hernia repair they did was badly swollen, painful, and hot. I discovered that my Mastercard number was stolen and used to buy things while I was in Canada, including a cash advance in Dubai last night, so I killed it. AFLAC has screwed up my reimbursements. I have to go to DC tomorrow and fly back on Monday.

I left work. I went to the post office and then to bank and got some cash. I pulled out of the bank parking lot and the cell phone went off. It was my #2, asking about sending other people to a meeting in October. After I told her to do whatever she thought best I continued driving. About a half mile further on my cell phone went off. It was American Fencers' Supply in San Francisco calling because my credit card didn't work. I explained the situation and gave them another credit card number which was NOT compromised.

Then I came home. I have to pack. I have to eat dinner. I have to get some sleep so I can be on the shuttle to Salt Lake City at 6:30 a.m.

I tend to parse out my spending on a couple of cards. One is used just for online purchases, and I have insisted that they leave the credit line fairly low, despite their annual offers to raise it. Another is in my wallet, and one is not being used right now because they raised the rates and changed the terms a few months back. But they sent me a letter last week, saying they noticed I wasn't using it, so maybe I'd like the interest rate lowered? They may be slow, but they do eventually catch on!

The online purchases account has been slowly moving to earlier and earlier due dates, and I noticed it was enough out of sync with my accounting software that the last two months the payments have gone in a day or two late. I called and told them I had two requirements--put the date back where it was and lower the interest (which had crept up because of the late payments, perhaps). They accommodated both requests and tolerated my suggestion that this was a sneaky way to do business. Looks like holding onto customers who pay their bills and have good credit is a desirable thing in this current atmosphere of dodgy credit practices.

We dumped all credit cards except for MC for online purchases (this is the one that was compromised) and Visa (which pays us something annually) for everything else. The MC has a low credit line, protection for both us and the merchants. The Visa has a credit line double that of MC, which is plenty.

AND they are both through the same Credit Union, with which we have had good relations for about 25 years now.

What annoys me about credit card fraud (apart from the time you have to take sorting it out) is that the merchants get screwed. This drives up the cost to everyone in several ways. And if it's a small business, well....

Rapaire, living as you do in a stout Western State dedicated to the preservation of hunky male mythologies and such, surely you could manage as needed by converting your holdings to small leather bags of gold nuggets and dust? Sure, weighing things instead of writing a check is a nuisance, but, boy, is it a secure defense against cybercrime!!

The cash advance in Dubai is telling--one supposes this number went into a networked crime syndicate. Better check your credit records closely for a while. They keep coming back. A friend lost her checkbook several years ago and every now and then some new check or charge tries to go through.

I am sure if LH had not gotten all obsessed about some two-horse town in Greater Bumphuque, he'd have posted something scathingly brilliant by now, which would have had as all rolling on the floor laughing. Alas, it is not to be...

Oh, the shame!! Caught!! Exposed for the hoser I am!! Trashed in midstride by Little Hawks scintillating, keen-edged repartée and deathless deftness of rhetorical device!! Damn, I hate it when that happens.

Both horses, huh? Wow. You're right, I am impressed. Never mind in what way...

Easy to say, not so easy to prove. Having now seen twice as many images of Orillia than I ever planned or desired to, I would submit the possibility that it is really one horse being moved around deftly to make the place LOOK like a two-horse town. And if it (or they) is/are actually stallions, what are they doing in Outer Bumphuque?

Rapaire, you are so right. I saw those very two horses the other day, matter of fact. I was driving to the post office, and I happened to pass this place where the two horses live. They were cavorting in a most unusual fashion. One of them seemed to be attempting to climb on top of the other and, well, what can I say? At least one of them horses is definitely male. No question about it. It was ENORMOUS!!!! I mean, just flippin' incredible. Downright scary. Too bad I did not have the camera.

I could have proven to Shane that there is someone out there who is "bigger".

He'd never admit it, of course. But he would know, and that would be good enough.

Ya gotta wonder what kind of a place would invest so much energy in trying to look better than Skaneateles,New York, Little Hawk...I mean, it's kinda like being proud one is better off than some kind of wino on the corner, because one has a dollar in his wallet. Maybe that's a bad simile, but you get my point, I am sure. Anyway, I am glad you're somewhere better than whoosy.

Ah, memories of my 3-year stint in Ontario are coming back to me. 'Fraid I don't have any real images of Orillia in my head, but I do remember driving by the signs quite often.

(With what Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Reagan and the Bush crime family have wrought here in the US over the past 3 decades, I'm really beginning to regret not having tried harder to stay in Canada for a couple more years, to be eligible for citizenship. It wouldn't be that easy to get back in these days, even though I now get a small pension checque* from the Canadian government every month now.)

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*See? I haven't totally lost the spelling habits that finally took hold about a year before I left Downsview and Montréal.